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100 Stolen Hats

The detectives accordingly returned to the house, and found another hat in the yard, which they say was thrown out by Pearl Wolf. She was accordingly arrested on a charge of petit larceny. A lot of silk hats and other goods which were found in the flat were taken to headquarters. A number of merchants who were robbed will call this morning to see if they can identify the stuff. Pearl Wolf denies knowing anything about the stuff found in the flat.

— The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 30, 1898

Police were called to Moore’s dry goods store in Cincinnati on April 29, 1898, after an alert clerk noticed a woman wearing a cloak that had been stolen from the shop the previous week. The woman, Anne Ernstein, alias Annie Campbell, claimed she purchased the cloak from a peddler, however the police didn’t swallow her tale, so they locked her up for shoplifting. Her companions, Pearl Wolf and Laura Butler, were not charged. Both women boarded with Anne.

Detectives went to Anne’s apartment where they discovered a large collection of stolen items, including hats from Appel’s millinery store. They also found Pearl trying to get rid of the evidence by throwing it out into the yard, so took her into custody on a shoplifting charge.

Pearl, a local butcher’s daughter, had been in trouble with the police before. She and her roommate Laura (the other woman in the store when Anne was arrested) had been detained a few days earlier. The pair had been out drinking with a “traveling man” and he claimed they robbed him. It’s possible that sex for hire was involved and one of the women stole his money while he was “distracted” by the other. The man refused to press charges, likely because he didn’t want his name published in the newspaper.

What’s clear from her rogues’ gallery photo is that Pearl appreciated a nice hat. (Did she steal it or buy it?) During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most women adored beautiful hats and never went on an excursion, jail included, without one. The police allowed Pearl to keep her pretty chapeau on her head in both the front and side photos — normally the hat would be removed for the side shot. She went to trial for larceny but the press didn’t cover the outcome of her case.

There was another attempt to rob Appel’s millinery store a few days later when young woman went into the shop wearing an inexpensive tam o’ shanter (a beret with a pom-pom on top) and tried to walk out with a $25 confection fit for a queen on her head. She was caught when she aroused the clerk’s suspicions by asking to buy some cheap roses to put on “her” expensive hat. Harry Appel, the shop’s owner, decided not to prosecute after the young woman’s employer pleaded for mercy. However the exasperated Appel complained that more than 100 hats had been stolen from his shop in the previous two months and noted that he intended to hire a private detective for his store.

Featured photo: Bertillon card of Pearl Wolf. Collection of the author.